00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien, and this week we're joined by the great Shane Mahoney. And if you don't know who Shane Mahoney is, stop now and go back to episode number five of The Hunting Collective almost a year ago now and listen to that episode. He's What that episode will do is color a little bit of who he is, where he came from, some of the important aspects of his early life, and some of his overall philosophies about what we do. What I wanted this conversation to be, and it turned out to be a pretty prolific one, is to be specifically breaking down the North American model of wildlife conservation. And if you don't know about that model, hopefully you do already understand what it is. It's a set of principles that was introduced by Dr Valerius Geist and Shane Mahoney himself and some others back originally, but he, as Shane will describe gain Steam throughout the the following decades, and it's really the principles that god wildlife management and conservation in the US and in Canada and it's important. I've referenced on this podcast many times. I've talked about it on other podcasts and larger platforms many times, and I feel as though this conversation is seminal to how we think about ourselves um and our influence on the natural world, and the way that we manage that influence and the way that we achieve sustainability in all of these things that we do. And so that's what we talked about. We went through the history. Shane has a unique history with the North American Model. There are some anecdotes and stories in here that I doubt anyone will ever have heard about how it was conceived and how it was marketed and promoted and normalized. And I'm very excited to have this podcast to be where those are seen. So we're gonna we've broken this up into two episodes. This first episode will start to get in We'll get into the history of a North American model and some of the more important tenants, and then next week, next Tuesday, more will come. But for now, please listen to the first part of our wonderful conversation on the North American Model of wildlife conservation with Shane Mahoney Shane Mahoney, how's it going really well here in bose My, Montana? Enjoining the the cold sunshine? It's fantastic. Yeah, I find it like people people will complain about the cold. I find that there's a lot of cold days here there at this blue sky people. The mountains are you know, tower above you, and its sun is out. It's even if it's negative five. He still feels wonderful. I love it here, man, I love it. I don't mind the cold. You make it here often. I know you've been here a couple of times recently. Yeah, I know. I make it to Montana fairly often because I've done a lot of things in this state. I mean, I m work with the Elk Foundation, did a lot of things with them over the years. I mean, it was in this state that we filmed the opportunity for all the first full exposition of the North American model that's been so widely distributed. Um, you know, I did television shows, hosted a narrated Boone and Crockett's television show for seven years, and they're based in Missoula. And now I have a lot of partnerships, um that are resting in the state. In Missoula still with Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation as a major partner. But here in Bozeman, I have the Wilds Sheep Foundation and Sitka Gear Mystery Ranch, ETCeteras. So you know, um it's kind of become a little bit of a little bit of a hub state for me in a sense, you know. And plus it's absolutely glorious here. So and I've hunted elk here in the past, and I've done some fishing here and I most likely will be back to hunt elk again this fall. Great. Great, Well, I don't want to leave the people way. They want to get into one of the reasons I wanted to chat me this time. And if you if you're interested in Shane's background, go back and listen to I Believe episode five that you and I did you know I had to be a year ago now, Um it does go back into you know, how you grew up in in your life in Canada and Newfoundland. And a lot of people have made comments to me in in the preceding year that that was very interesting that they've never heard speaking like that. Um, So go back the episode five, listened to that. But I want to get into and as much depth as we possibly can. A couple of things here, but the first one is, um, well you already mentioned it, the North American model of wildlife conservation. It's it's been something that's um come up for me a lot recently, come up for our world a lot recently as we get challenged from without, you know, within our group. Is something that we've we've used to push back on. We have this model of conservation, it's been codified and UM it's and I've heard described as kind of a look back um to the history of conservation in North America, you know, how tip back to the history of conservation, but also a way to look forward as well, um in the same vein. So I want to go through that and and maybe start at the beginning. UM. And what you know, take us back to the first time you heard this term, you know, where you were, and how it started to become, um, what it became eventually when it was launched. Well, I tend to ask very long questions, That's quite all right. I tend to give a long answers. So between us we'll chew up the time, yes we will. But first of all, a lot of people, UM, when they hear the term um, and even people who use the term frequently um feel or believe that this is a very old term and that somehow that term was around ever since the movement, if you will, for conservation began, and that's just completely untrue. The term entered the English language around nineteen eight. Before that time, no one had ever used this term, because no one had ever attempted to come up with a moniker or a title, if you will, for the system of institutions, policies, and laws and organizations that collectively form the model or the operational approach of to conservation in North America. And it was first coined the term by a man, a very very close friend and mentor of mind, Dr Valerius Geist. And why did he feel it necessary or what motivated him to come up with the term was at that time there was a growing investment on the part of some people in this idea of capturing and maintaining in captive circumstances wildlife. In Canada and in the United States, the whole game ranching game farming industry, which had its share of notoriety, a considerable percentage of which has been very justly deserved, and Geist and amongst some others, and of course I was drawn into it as a as a friend and student. With him, Um pointed out the amazing risks, uncertainties and unknowns, as well as the known problems associated with keeping wildlife in captive circumstances, selectively breeding them, and doing all of the things that eventually formed the basis of the game ranching business in in our two countries, and in particular we were warning, and he was warning about the problems of a disease transfer between wild and the captive animals, and not just the diseases that we knew, but it has been a pattern over historical time that under captive circumstances, for many reasons, some of which are not well known, novel diseases arise. And so while he was not predicting a c w D problem, a chronic wasting disease problem in specifics, he was predicting essentially that phenomena, the creation of that environment. Yes, And so in these debates, which became very much, very intense, there were critics of his Um who kept coming back and saying, well, so what you know, what's at risk? And at one point he said, the entire model of conservation in North America's at risk, and they responded, Uh, what model there isn't what models out there? And of course this turned Geist to his computer where he smacked out, you know, the first real peer reviewed academic publication on the model. And that too is interesting because people have to understand that what's now general parlance or general discussion amongst us all as hunters, non hunters, state agency personnel, politicians, etcetera, did in fact come out of the academic literature. And then I began the effort of popularizing this, bringing it to American audiences and talking about it a great deal. I did that first in in Green Bay, Wisconsin that a governor symposium, and virtually no one in the audience had ever heard of the North American model. And through a group of colleagues who worked with me, eventually that I met in this country, we started taking sort of a workshop to the state agencies in the United States of America, and out of those state agencies and presentations at conferences, we eventually got this term, first of all, floating out through the discussion that was taking place around North America. And suddenly people realized the value of having a concept school basket that you could carry it around with and instead of having to talk about all those individual pieces, you could say the model and people would understand exactly what you meant. And you can number you have a numbered a numbered list of tenants and things that and that, and there were there were essentially seven principles. Do you believe you know, I've read a lot um about the subject, and you know, in the last couple of years, as it's become important to my you know, understanding of what we do in conservation, or my general understanding of the historical principles, you know, and really um an ethical prescription for the future of conservation too, at um. But a lot of people will say it didn't really come to be articulated until the early two thousand's, you know, is that is that the way that you know, I know, you say, like in smaller pockets that you start to grow. It took it. It took about a decade, so that would be right. I mean, it took about a decade for us too, to really bring it. I mean I I personally was speaking at every event you could possibly name to talk about this. We had in some cases four and five state agencies coming together to to attend the two day workshops that we would give on this. We had organizations like the Elk Foundation and the National Wall Turkey Federation that helps sponsor some of some of those. We had individual state agents such as Arizona when Dwayne Schroff was director inviting me in too simply speak to all his staff. Everybody from an administrative personnel read up the line around this, and that happened on many occasions. And then of course, you know, others picked it up and they began to talk about it in their agencies, and then they became knowledgeable of it and they went elsewhere and spoke about it. But it's a very interesting point historiographically and from the point of view of having influence. We took a term I happen to know the man who invented it, and I knew the history of why it came to be. Not very many people will have ever heard that history that we've just shared on your podcast. But that's what happened, um. But we were able to take it without money, without an organization behind us, without any kind of beautifully laid out planned uh, just by sheer passion and commitment in recognizing the value of this idea. You know, I gave years to essentially UM marketing, if you will, the term, and now it's out there. It is, it is. And we were talking the other day about UM I think the same room and talking about timeliness, right, and you know, serving up your message when it's being when it's ready to be heard. So what do you think this What do you think during that time? I mean, obviously we just discussed it. It It spans, you know, roughly twelve year period there, fifteen year period until it really got codified and articulated in the public sense of that. What do you feel like it says about out that generally that decade in conservation, where was the conservation world. It's obvious to me that it says that they were desperate to to see this outlined in some way, or maybe they didn't even know that they needed it, but when they heard it, they knew it was a solution to a problem, to kind of take people through where you feel like the progression of conservation wasn't during that time? Well, I think both things you say are true. I mean I think and I think both those things are often true. Generally, there can be a community of interest for an idea that are not aware that they needed. But as soon as they see it, they say, of course that that makes perfect sense. There was also however, at that time, in the nine eighties, UM, it was really when we started to see the explosion of this whole idea of game ranching and um exotics being moved in and out. And it was not only resident or an indigenous or native wildlife that was being incorporated. People were talking about bringing all kinds of exotics in and it was happening in a way that was also tied to to large money and and big agriculture in the sense you know, and uh, that opened up a series of conflicts that still reside in this debate space UM. Conflicts over Okay, who owned them now? When while if it's on the land, the state agency, the state government has the responsibility to them or the provincial government under the public trust doctrine, which is a principle of the model, and that has been upheld in court. Well, once you transpose those wild animals into fenced enclosures, began to feed them and inoculate them and do all the things you have to do when you confind animals in a small space. UM, suddenly you know, debates started to arise over well, who owned them? Could these not be private property? Were they not private property? And of course this cracked open a very big conceptual debate which was absolutely foundational to the future of conservation and all utilization of wildlife by consumptive users. Certainly that oh, maybe there was now going to be two kinds of wildlife. There was going to be the public's wildlife and then there's going to be the private citizens wildlife. How do we how do we, you know, judge the transfer between those two. I mean, that's a complicated thing. And it also is a complicated thing mechanistically as you point out, and legalistically, um, which would involve you know, which government departments were responsible agriculture or the Wildlife Agency, etcetera, etcetera. But it also tapped into, of course, one of the foundational, quiet, but deeply held beliefs, views and hopes and values of American and Canadian society, which was and has always been that while if is owned by no one except all of us collectively, and this is one of those things that you know, um, we can look to where the public doesn't go around every day thinking about this, but should you challenge it? Suddenly they start to think about it pretty seriously. It would be akin to saying to the American public today, we have decided to privatize all the national parks. And you know, even though not everybody is screaming every day about national parks in this country, pretty soon people would stay off a part of the Yellowstone and those animals will now belong to a certain person subset of individuals. So it really cracked open that kind of foundational debate. And therefore that too, was part of the motivation for clarifying, hold on, we have a system, and it's been very successful, and it's been based on these kinds of principles, and private ownership of wildlife was not one of them. So we're not going there. And this became a very vitriolic debate. I mean, there were there were there were death threats, and there were a lot of things. This became a long before it was as intense in the United States. It was viciously intense in Canada, and eventually became viciously intense in a lot of places. And it's only last year that the government of Missouri, you know, finally decided that you know, wildlife under private or captive circumstances remained the responsibility of the wildlife agency and was not going to be transferred to agriculture and treated, you know, fundamentally differently. So the debate still rages over this. Yeah, And I think it when these fundamental changes occur, or these these happenings in our world occur that results in this need for fundamental change or fundamental shift, it has to take many years for it to settle in, and especially the way our you know, the model prescribed state were un manage it every state, every region, you know, some I'm sure there's some states. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but there there may still be some states in this country where there are very few or none at all high fence properties that have privatized wildlife. That is true. I lived in a a state of Texas where there it is part of the culture at this point in a large way. So, I mean, it's with those varying values across the board, it's it's hard to kind of lock that down and condify that it is true. And of course what it what it also remarks I think is that, um, you know, our debates over wildlife and whether even something that superficially might not seem that significant, you know, so some animals are going to be held behind fences can unleash really fundamental outpourings of expression and concern on the part of people and institutions, which, if you think about it, is evidence for the fact that we really did have a model. We really did have principles, We really did have institutions right, and systems of laws and so on that we had developed over time to safeguard wildlife and to safeguard human engagements with it under a prescribed set of values, ethical ethics, and moral compass bearings that in general will remain acceptable to two people. There were, of course critics. I mean, I could name you even some high profile personalities in the conservation world today who said to me when I first started this in the nineteen nineties, what model. We don't have a model, And they kind of, you know, dismissed it as though the model is what they kind of personally carry around with them, right. But in the end we succeeded massively, and fortunately in September this year, the Geist and I will come out now with the first full edited volume book devoted to the North American model, which I believe was only took thirty two years. Shane. Yeah, that's all. In the meantime, there's been a lot of writing about it there, but this book will really bring it together. Uh. And it's an effort to bring to create a compendium very carefully chosen in terms of the chapters and so on, that a new student coming in if they wanted to know what is this thing they talk about, this North American model, they can go when they can understand it a huge resource, I feel, and I think you have. I've talked about this before, but I feel that we don't have enough of that for you know, it doesn't even to be new. It could be any hunter or angler who was wondering about the history about how all these models became to be, um, whether it come where, whether you could just talk typically about not even uh like the Pittman Robert Robertson exercise tax model, like just that as a model. What what that does? I mean it's taken for him and Dingle Johnson, and I think should probably take for him in other ways in our world. I probably will and m Sureley wills it seems to work. Um. And you know, there's some parts of the Lander Water Conservation Fund where we're pulling moneys moneys from off shore drilling and putting them into conservation works. So I think there's there's a model there, a principle there that maybe hasn't been articulated that could be. But I'm immensely glad that that you and um professor guys have done that because it is needed and it's something that I wonder Another thing I wanted to ask about, and if I could just Jergen, I think this is a one of the really interesting things when we come out with this book will be how well it is taken up and how well it is circulated. UH. Four years ago I finished two monographs for UH, the International Journal of Environmental Studies on the role of hunting specifically and conservation in North America. This is the largest collections, about twenty five peer reviewed papers out of a European journal that is largely left word leaning in most of its politics. It's very much an environmental journal. But they, you know, they have published these two monographs, and I thought, when we published those two monographs where I did a boy, people will really want to take them up because here you have in one, you know, two little volumes. You have the information on the recovery of wildlife, specific case studies for species, why it happened, how it happened, that funding mechanisms, everything of that nature around hunting um and yet there has been very very little interest or pick up on those things. And yet with those two volumes and this new book, as I said, you could have a student coming into this program in order university or college who would have what has has taken me forty years to to sort of compile, you know, that they would have it there. And the hope there was that this would be really uh taken up and really utilized by layman, by professionals, by academics and so on. So here's a challenge here now for your podcast. You know, maybe this uh, this this new system here and the whole meat eator machine and so on and so forth might be quite helpful as a vehicle to help get this out. I hope. So, yeah, I hope so because because again I love I love the idea. You know, I'm not sure if you guys put it out or has just been picked up over time, that that is this reflection on the history of hunting and conservation and how those things came to be known as parallel at the very least, but also this prescription towards the future, as if as to say, like we this is we're currently in what I would say the hey day have success for this model. It's kind of weaved its way in and out of these generations and these decades and and remained. Um. And I feel like that's that's an important thing to me and to think of it. And if if somebody takes one thing out of this podcast going forward, is to think of the model in that way. You think of it as a look back but also a prescription forward. Um. And that's something very recently that I've come to understand and that's what I think makes it so important. And what happens there in terms of your point about going forward? Then, um, you know what happens if that isn't workable for the future? And what are the alternatives that will be workable? Are there any? What do they look like? I mean, we really are at a time where many many pieces of evidence forced us to think about this, right, Yeah, And we've we've talked about that in some recently over some bourbon at the Wild Cheap Show and you know, elsewhere Uh. But I also think my other personal opinion on this is that it's important to have a starting point if we are going to change the model or be you know, forced to or just by happenstances of the way society interacts with wildlife, if we feel the need to shift it, which I'm sure we will, yeah, of course in the short term or long term or both, have a place to start and have an agreed upon place to start, like this is what's working now, there's seven tenants. Let's do we need to add some take some away to it? Are you know some of these tenants in this model maybe not so effective in the way that they're being undertaken right now and across the state level, or however we would say however we would at tackle that. But it's important to have a place from which we start. Um. And I think, you know, just just hearing that you know some of the things you just said, I didn't know at all about the history of it. I think it's it's huge for people understand where this came from and how it was born out, and the fact that we're dealing with CWD outbreaks all over the country. It's a huge topic in our world. And you know val Geist was thinking of this idea. When he was thinking of this model, he was and and of course he's been proven unfortunately, he has been proven deadly accurate in his forecasts. And you know, we should also float another cautionary tale, UM, the appearance of this rather strange disease, chronic wasting disease, which we now have found in Norway and South Korea in various other places. So these this is moving its way, um, but it originated here, and originated in this country right in originated a state not far from here, and so on. This does not mean that we finally set the boogeyman free, because there could be many other things which we are not aware of, that are taking place in that does E's cauldron that captive wildlife can create. And so while we ponder the implications of what a massive expansion of chronic wasting disease across wider ranges of the species could mean, while we ponder what it would be, what it would implicate or or or insinuate if we found that that disease would jump easily to people. Um, we might also reflect on the fact that as long as we maintain these animals in captive circumstances, we run the risk of brand new problems that have not yet EMO. Yeah, like we were saying earlier, I mean, it creates this environment. Who knows what the outcomes of this, the creation of that environment are, but it's there. It's kind of always always on, always on. It was very interesting. Just one small little further point on that. When I was in charge of wildlife research in Newfoundland and Labrador, we had a strong then because every province was being faced with it as many states were ideas from local entrepreneurs to to raise captive whatever was made sense in that location, and they wanted to bring in uh they wanted to ranch caribou, for example, and I was deadly opposed to this. And they they brought in experts from New Zealand, where a lot of this work, you know, had happened a long time before, veterinarians and others and came and had a big debate with the provincial government in Newfoundland and our biologists myself and so on included. And I remember one of the things that really tipped over the conversation because they were forceful in their expression that you know, we can contain these problems. You know, we had the best veterinarians, we we look after the animals, all those things being true. Was just before they came to Newfoundland. I was well connected in the literature and geist and I were constantly, you know, screaming through and streaming through the literature looking for problems that were emergent. And just before they came for those meetings in Newfoundland, um, a strange disease had broken out that was affecting was developing lesions on the faces of captive red deer in New Zealand. And they had never seen it before, even though they had had these animals in captivity and we're you know, selling venison as its marketed you know, around the DA to this day. Yeah. Uh. And I brought this up in the discussion, I remember, and they didn't expect us to know about it, and of course the disease was too young for anyone to know exactly what was happening. But it was just another example of how even long term practices with animals and captivity can continue to generate novel diseases over time. Yeah, is there. You may have just answered that with some of some of that reflection, but as it was there a time where you you know, from the time that you first you know, started discussing what this model was, and you're kind of rising in your mind that you that you realize how important it was. Was there a moment that you remember specifically or a group series, I do very very well. I mean there was, and it was instantaneous, um, because when I first read that first paper, and of course I knew that paper was coming out because Geist and I were already sort of together, you know, we were talking about things and many many, many things that he and I talked about. UM. And it just struck me as soon as as soon as you had this this this kind of portable, uh conceptual little library with you. Now, UM, you didn't have to reach for thoughts and considerations in a discussion or an argument, to prove a point or to or to try and explain why something should matter in conservation. All of a sudden you could open this little box up and there in the theater, you know, behind as the curtain moved out, you saw on the stage all the players, the institutions, the policies, the laws, the funding mechanisms, you know, the idea that wildlife belongs to everyone, the application of science and expertise. You saw it all there, and you could simply look at it as you were sort of explaining that world to somebody. You could do it in a way that the narrative was logical, it was concise, it was contained, and the principles that were embedded in it were of course principles that matter to everyone. So for me, it was virtually instantaneous. I remember the discussions with Dr Geist at the time saying, you know, normally, what happens in a peri viewed publication in an academic journal, you might have a readership of thirty forty, fifty seventy people. Honestly, for those of you involved in podcast and those social media they seem such ridiculous numbers. You ask yourself, why would anyone do it? Now they have other impacts. But my concern, and I was right in that concern, was that if we didn't find a way to sort of take the show on the road with this idea, that it ran the risk of simply being embedded and somebody picking it up ten years later and said, you know, there was an article published ten years ago by a guy Geist, and it's referred to this. I was convinced instantly and what was needed was a road show. And I started the road show. And I started the road show in Green Bay, Wisconsin at the Governor's Symposium on Hunting and Fishing, when I was first my first real invitation to come and speak in the United States, and I laid it on and that evening, and from that very day there started a process of people in that audience who came up to me, after people in the Turkey Federation, people who became very close friends and colleagues of mine over time, and we collectively and independently took that show on the road and that's why we're having this conversation today. Yeah, it's huge, um, and it's you know, a relatively We're not talking fifty years go here. I mean, we're talking we're in the middle of the creation of this thing. I really, I really feel. I mean, like you say, your your book will come out soon, so it it's obviously just by that fact, we're in the middle of the story being written here. Yes. Um, it's not like we can look back and it's not the turn of the century where we can say, you know, um, the first conferences or the first this first that we're still you know, close to the first time. This is really you know, I would I would say, put out there in a way that could be consumed by everybody for all time in that book. Um, well, let's break down some of the tenants here, because I think we're talking before that. I went on I was on Joe Rogan's podcast when we started to break down these tenants. We were talking about all kinds of subjects, um ass off the case there. I think we got to Batman or something somehow in here got to Batman. Well maybe we need that, maybe here Batman. Um. But you know, even though we didn't really didn't really go through it in detail, the reaction from so many non hunters, um, when we went through these tenants on his podcast, which is a huge reach obviously, UM, it was amazing. People like I didn't know that these thoughts were organized. I didn't know that this was I didn't know what I thought what you talked about was bullshit. But it seems like because it's organized in this way and they all all these things are relatable and functional, that you hunters have thought this thing out, you know, Um, you conservationists have thought this thing out. Hunting is a huge part of what we're talking about, and so, um, that's what propelled me to want to, you know, to continue to break this down as a hunter who is somebody who has to who is entrusted at some level with going out in the public and talking about, um, what we do. I feel like probably there's a lot of hunters that have no idea or very little idea about how these tenants were formed and then how they you know, were listed in the way that they're listed. Yeah, so let's start with the first one. I don't think you feel like we should read them all first and then go through them or just go through them one at the time. What's the best way to maybe just go through them one other times? So we don't expect people to remember this big list. You know, this is painful. This is painful enough to listen to. We don't want to make it any more difficult for them. We should have had a whiskey a little bit more entertaining. This is Yeah, you're just just lean back and get educated to your people. This is what we're gonna try. Um, the first one is Wildlife as public trust resource. You know, take us through the thought process with that well of course, Um. Leaving aside the Native Americans, for whom, in fact the resource was always treated as a public trust, even though it may not have been codified. That was how they approached wildlife. Obviously, Um, the European colonizers, or the European immigrants that came to the United States and to Canada for that matter, in the periods of the early fifteen hundreds, and in Newfoundland's case, and then the colonies that started to appear in places like Cupids in Newfoundland in sixteen ten, Jamestown and so on and so forth in the United States, as that movement began to take hold, of course, Um, there was a there was a reality clash that occurred that we can only imagine these people coming from the difficult circumstances of Europe that in many cases involved landscapes that had been massively changed, living in urban environments of great filth, and circumstances of great deprivation for many of them in many many ways. And they were seeking freedom from a lot of things, including religious persecution and other things. And they all of a sudden landed upon the shores of this extraordinary, massive place that they could not even imagine. The contours of it was so massive of um, and it through you know, it thrived with wildlife of all kinds, and the oceans and the streams on the land and so on. And you know, they therefore were faced with this incredible bounty that they had never witnessed before, as well as meeting cultures that they had never known existed. And they had come, however, from political systems, many of them, in which degrees of privilege to one extent or another, sometimes extreme uh in terms of ownership of wildlife lay in the hands of wealthy with private citizens and wealthy citizens in particular, and in many cases, of course, in in the hands of reigning monarchs are basically in for many centuries in various parts of Europe, essentially absconded to themselves the right, the only rights. And so this was this was a circumstance now where suddenly nobody owned anything. Really, they didn't even in the land as they saw it, leaving aside against again the tragic story of the of the Native American um and so all kinds of new balances has to be worked out. Well, I just get this land because I fence it. Well, you couldn't just do that in Europe. But suddenly you could do that kind of thing here, and then the issue became, you know the wildlife, well, I have free access to it, and so on and so forth. And in the early days that's the way it had to be. But they began even fairly soon in the local environments of colonies to find out that they could quickly denude the landscape of wildlife if they try it, and because they had to rely on it, and there were in fact some very early attempts amazingly so in this country for kind of restrictive local game laws that didn't amount to much. Yeah, didn't they always? They always beat up against manifest destiny or there's the idea that you know, we're just going to blow through this. Well, you certainly couldn't control, you know, the idea of control, as I said last night, and discussions here in the city and the town own you know, that was not really on the agenda. But eventually what would take place is that there would be a challenge of this um dealing with the harvest of oysters actually in a river system, where the issue came up before the courts to say whether or not somebody could essentially own that particular resource in that particular location and exclude others sort of from it. So this was the wild Takings, and there was established a law at the time that said no, that these resources reside in the public trust. And one can question why the court would have rendered that decision, but of course courts themselves are the products of cultural circumstances, and in the circumstance of the new world and the new opportunity and the new way of doing things, there certainly was a reluctance to go back to something that would mirror or to create something that would mirror the often more exclusionary policies and laws of Europe with respect to access to wildlife. And the only way out of that was to essentially say, you know, it will be for everyone, which, as we know, uh for a significant period of time meant that wildlife became vulnerable because that idea also made it much more difficult to constrain people right, and that eventually is what led us to the point where ultimately the great revolution in how we would deal with wildlife and all the other you know, fair chase hunting and application of science, other principles you will come to. How they eventually emerged, but the foundational principle of all and what is considered the most sacred foundational principle for North American conservation. And remember, Canada and the United States joined in this model, which itself for something we might talk about because that was a phenomenon was that no one owns wild things. And this had precedence in many historical laws, including the idea of res nullius in Roman law, for example, which had essentially saying the same thing, it's owned by no one until you possess it, until you harvested, for example. And there were traceable other issues of law and jurisprudence that the that the famous case of Martin versus Waddell, which was the case that I refer to in the Supreme Court with Chief Justice Tawny residing, that eventually led to the proclamation that this was going to be a public trust resource. There were linkages with Magna Carta, and there were linkages with Roman law. So I'm not saying that they didn't borrow from international institutions and policies, but ultimately they created a system here which really did enshrine this notion that every citizen of Canada and the United States equally owns, although no one really owns wild things. Yeah, and a complicated, uh, a complicated idea to explain. Right, of course, of course, the thing that bangs up again, I own the land and I own the wildlife exactly. And this is and that's a really important point that you raised there, because, of course, private property rights in the United States and Canada, but especially in this country the United States, have been foundational to the economic stability, growth, and prosperity of this nation. So and that is also, I would say, considered an absolutely inviolate principle of Americanism. Um. And yet, as you point out, we had to deal with the fact that, Okay, I own this land. I fenced it, I've probably you know, produced it or cultivated it and done all kinds of great things. But a deer pops in, or a bear comes in, or whatever might come in the right there on my land, but I do not own them. That's a powerful thing for a country to have been able to lay down in very early days. Yeah, we've seen that in the you know, the more this this, all these these these tenants kind of open up these rabbit holes that we can charge down. But we've seen that in kind of the modern parlance around public lands. You know, you know, Utah is a huge bastion for pro state transfer. Um. And folks there are in hatch and among them and others have called back to the Homestead Act, like it's America's right to go and grab up this land and own it and profit from it, right, um. That being this deeply held ideal that that we have as a country, using that as a way to say that public lands are go against public lands or some sort of aristocracy um to go yeah, in reverse. Right. So, so we've run up these these two core ideals have kind of run up against each other. I'm sure they always have, but they have, you know, even in recent times. The folks that are listening to this have only been in our hunting community for a short time. They may you know, maybe where the public land um issue. And I think it, you know, and and it's relevant now because there are people that um, you know, homesteading and the ownership of land is in privatization of land is a huge is a huge issue, um. And when we when we throw that up against um, the public resource of wildlife, it's to this day entangled. And I imagine we'll remain tangled on a you know, on a micro level. On the macro level, I think we all agree with it. But on a micro level, when you create a habitat and you pay, you have it created in a wildlife my you know, migrates are are is now in your property. You know, there's got to be a little bit of a in your own mind, there has to be a little bit of a pushback to the idea that that's a public resource, and there is, and that opens up all these new things that had to be added, compensation and relocation of wildlife and and rightfully so, protecting landowners rights and crops and so on and so forth. And yet through all of that confusion and conflict, and you know, it's like a it's it's complex. Things are constantly giving birth. Right, complex things are constantly giving birth. And so one issue arises, you grapple with it, but another one spins off from there, and another one spins off from there. The model, however, which is important in this context because of its structure that it had an architecture allows us to work through those problems and develop solutions that yet remain within the confines of that model. Right, So we didn't say, oh, in the case, let's say of agricultural depredation by wildlife, we didn't then turn around and say, when that became a significant problem, okay, that's an exception to the model. You own them now, because that's how we're going to deal with that. We didn't. We searched for solutions that allowed us to keep public trust and other principles of the model intact. And a lot of people do not understand that that the models principles were guiding so many things, setting limits on so many other policy and institutional decisions that we have found our way through and done some amazingly creative things, particularly in this country with things like the Farm Bill and other things. But the policies were developed in a framework that had to consider the architecture of the model. Yeah, that's we're back to in the beginning, where you set this base, this model's thing to work within, and you can and we will continue to shift ourselves around inside of that model. Yes, but not um not stirring from it is an important important construct from what we're talking about here, and for us as individuals and us as a collective. Yeah, I think so. So the next one and again, these all play well together. Um. The next one is elimination of markets for game. I think folks probably more familiar with that, just based on you know, being common history market hunting. But take us through kind of the thought process leading to that one. Well, you know, there there were, as I said, even long before the late you know, nineteenth and early twenty centuries, there were individual efforts in the part of individual states and even colonial governments in some cases to pass laws of restriction, laws of limitation on how we would harvest wildlife. Um. But of course there were so many compelling reasons, practical and ideological that led the American colonists to believe that it was his her right and indeed his her duty practically to dominate the land and to move wildlife off, and to create the kind of Jeffersonian America that for a long time prevailed and still echoes in the American psyche, the private family farm, you know, work hard, improve things, and and and prosper um. And but despite those pressures to stay the course and religious instruction that man shall have dominion, which played out a great deal as well. Matters of faith influenced this approach. Um, it soon began to become clear to everyone that this incredible wealth was disappearing. We had rivers that at previous times, perhaps only decades before, had had runs of an adramus fish, you know, such a salmon, for example, that literally clogged the waterways. You could almost walk across the rivers on their backs. You had in the coastal waters flatillas of lobsters that were sometimes three and four ft deep during spawning time that people could examine and sown. In other words, it just became obvious to the average person what was happening. And at the same time you then had the growth in the eastern cities of you know, elites who had time more time to reflect the idea of newspapers bringing arguments that they telegraph began to spread the word through wider regions. And suddenly you had, you know, a couple of really iconic things happened. First of all, you had the passenger pigeon, certainly the most numerous bird species on earth at the time. Um an animal that would you know, form flocks in some cases of a billion, a billion or more, animals that would take in some cases three four to five days to pass over a single locale so a farm studying family would see here hours before the birds would come the distant thunder of their wing beats, and then be plunged into essential darkness for days and reigned upon with guano that fell in the tuns from the passage of these birds and the din of the wind that came from them. These experiences were so strong that they entered the world of mysticism, and people believed. In some cases fell on their knees and said that they truly believed this was the end of the world. They could not imagine this thing. It was beyond the limits of their imagination. And then suddenly, in a relatively short period of time, they were gone. And then finally it was reported, of course that the last of the kind, Martha, the last of her kind, died in the Cincinnati Zoo, and they were gone forever. And the second thing I believe was the American bison. The slaughter that eventually went from simply taking them for product, for the meat and for the hides and so on, eventually descended through a combination of determined and purposeful strategy by the American government to starve out the remaining planes Indians who would not subdue to American European expansion culminated with a massive rise in the marketing of the the pelts and the hides for machinery purposes in Europe and also for clothing and various other things that were interested, but came down to the point where highly specialized individuals were essentially killing them just for their robes and often just for their tongues, uh, and leaving you know, these fields of rotting carcasses gleaming white with the fat on their backs as far as the eye could see. And of course this was now being seen by more people, because of course the railways themselves made it possible for those people to do that and get their hids back to ports in Missouri or other places where they could be shipped and eventually tanned and pursuited to Europe. More and more people saw it, journalists saw it, and eventually people were simply appalled by the scale of the destruction, and that really began to set in motion as well as nourished the already existing fear and concern that forward thinking people like George Bird Grennell, editor of Forest and Stream, the forerunner of Field and Stream, of course, editor for almost forty years They're a constant agitator for social progress in the in the world of conservation. The formation of groups like the Boone and Crockett Club in seven and like the Sierra Club some fifteen or twenty so years later. Ten years later, UM, you started to get the growth of not only UH you know, UM magazines and and the social media of the day to complain about this. It finally came to the point where people said, enough is enough. The incredible thing about that, however, that a lot of people, even students of the model, do not emphasize, or perhaps in some cases do not even recognize, is the genius in the approach of this. Let us imagine that today we are faced with the denuding of wildlife across the United States of America at a scale where pronghorn, antelope, whitetailed deer, wood duck, canada geese, mule deer, elk, black bear, grizzly bear, um wild turkey named the iconic are visible. Species are just being absolutely denuded from from the land. Uh. And we know that the reason they're being denuded from the land that people are killing them. People are hunting them to extinction. It would seem logical that The response to that might be, Okay, the problem is the killing of them. The problem is the hunting of them. Therefore, we are ending all hunting, all killing of these animals, at least for a period of time, some sort of moratorium at least, it's going to take place here. What the architects of the North American model did, and there were many of them, we refer to Roosevelt and a few others, of course, because they did a great job of promoting themselves even while alive. But they also did great things. But you know what they did, would say, no, we are actually going to make the harvesting of them the secret to their recovery. This really was, in my view and active genius, the introduction well it's it could be seen as the introduction of sustainability totally on the model. It was. This is where the the this this this idea that non you no longer would be able to take an animal and market its dead body and its parts, its meat, etcetera, etcetera, for your own personal gain. So your motivation was not for that. Your motivation would have been to engage in hunting because of other reasons, cultural, the sportsman's life, etcetera. Etcetera. And for food and for your own individual consumption that would be okay. But the marketing of dead wildlife essentially came to an end. And then, of course we had some of the most important pieces of legislation in the United States introduced that really gave us laws by which to control. Yeah, I mean the Lacy Act, yes, being being and the most and absolutely the most influential, and that was ninety eight I think around something around there. And then the Migratory Bird Act. Yes, it's some work on the international level as well. Uh, that opens up in Yes, and as a really important thing. You are, you open up there as well, because, um, while we think about the hunted species hunted for their hides and meat, one of the most egregious, virulent, an intensive market hunting that was occurring was focused on shore birds and colonial nesting birds, and in particular the birds of the long feathers as we would call them, the herons and the egrets and so on and so forth. At the time the first decade of the twenty century, a pound of egrets feathers was worth more than a pound of gold. That's a historical fact, and so massive destruction of breeding colonies took place. You know, while the birds were nesting was the time to get them together. They were there on the trees, it was easy to get up and kill them with muzzle loaders and so on and so forth. In large numbers of the eggs and chicks would be abandoned, Whole colonies would collapse. And while Roosevelt himself, George bird Grunel in particular, the man who founded the Audubon Society, ultimately railed against this no pun intended, uh. They they they also linked up with a very non traditional movement, I suppose at the time, which was the women's movement that at that time was actively campaigning for the for the vote, the suffrage movement. The bird feathers were used fundamentally to adorn women's hats. This was a massive fashion craze, and the more feathers you had, the better, and it reached the scale at which the nests themselves were actually placed in the hats, and so women of high fashion users both in Europe and in the United States, and of course we had these unlimited again unlimited in quotation marks colonies, and so we were feeding that. What eventually destroyed that market, what eventually for that market out of existence, a market we couldn't even imagine today, couldn't You could not. If somebody's walking around with a nest on their head, I'd I'd probably have something to say, yeah, and so, But it was the women of society in particular who ended that by making it simply unacceptable to come into a salon or to a party wearing something like it. And so this was one of the first interjections in a coordinated way by women in the conservation effort in America, and one of the most important things that could have possibly have been done, because we would have lost, unquestionably as we did the passenger pigeon, many many many species of that kind of the wading birds, except for the fact that um women can join their condemnation of it with the rising, often more patriarchal move in society of men's groups, you know, hunting groups that we're working on this thing. Yeah, you make a point again, this this could go for a long time, this particular one. But you make a good point around you know, the women who were taking part in this practice being the ones to you know, force it out, you know, if you if you don't allow it in the party then that that it doesn't become desirable anymore than it goes away. I think you could very much apply that to a lot of things going on in the hunting space right now. You certainly we were willing to um or had the forethought to eliminate, you know, to treat some things we're doing in that manner to you know, to to look towards the future and say, if we eliminate this now, we're going to be better off in the future. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that that uh, quietly and unexpectedly, Um, you know, women created almost out of nowhere, a forceful movement that that really was exceptional because nobody was supporting it. You I mean, it wasn't that wasn't part of the normal channels in society at the time. And yet I mean, they focused on this problem and they figured very quickly how to solve it, and they weren't waiting around for laws and uh you know, legislation to be passed, although that eventually was. They simply made it unacceptable, right, Yeah, that was It's good learning in there. So the next one. Feel like we covered that one. So we covered them pretty good. Um, if you don't if you guys, a lot of folks, I think, in the more modern sense, understand the Lacy Act and and that a lot of people are charged with federal crimes when they do things illegal from state to state. I think it's good to think of it in this context. And so when folks are, when you guys are thinking about the Lacey Acts or the Migratory burd Act, think about it um in this context as well as the more modern sense of how it's being implemented. Yeah, I mean, it was a rescue for this problem, right for sure. If we didn't have it, then people just escaped to another state. Keep doing um. The next one here, number three, the allocation of wildlife by law. Again similar to number two, but take us kind of through how this became. Well, of course, initially there there were no laws governing the taking of wildlife at all. Yeah. Actually, my dad, we're gonna answer something specifically for my dad because people listen to this, he did, and feel free to get this as you explained this. But he asked me like, when was the first game law passed? When the when the first person have to buy a license? And I didn't really know the answer to it well. As I said, there were actually some extremely early game laws and so on, even in the colonies. Um that came out limiting during a certain season you couldn't take deer, or you could only take too many, and you know, you couldn't do things during the nesting season, and so on. There was a sprinkling of them, and there weren't few, there was, there's many of them. But of course they didn't really have an impact because of course, while they had a certain level of justice that you know, one also had to understand that very often those laws had to be set aside because people were starving or you know, they didn't find enough Indian corn to steal, or whatever the circumstances might have been, and so um. You know. But um, the idea that while ife would be allocated by law became, you know, a gradually spreading kind of notion because you had in the mostly in the nineteen hundreds, but in some cases earlier than that, but mostly in the nineteen hundreds, you had the growth of course of these kinds of as the cities in the east expanded, you know, these kinds of shooting and hunting clubs, often duck clubs, and so on and so forth, where people would go out in either purchase or lease, you know, significant amounts of land that were often marsh land, you know, places where waterfowler would come and they would form laws for their club. So if Ben and Shane were going to be a part of the Bozeman Waterfowlers Club, then and we would have to agree to abide by the various limits. There'll be no hunting in these seasons, you know, we'd let the duck lay more communal waves, yes, and they were really uh, they weren't state statutes at the time. They were more local county or actual club membership kind of voluntary laws if you mean, you know what I mean. And but eventually it clearly became necessary after we started to realize that the excessive take could not be tolerated, and we also decided that we would still allow people to harvest wildlife. Then clearly there now had to be limits. We had to prescribe how that could be done. We couldn't just say no more market hunting, but yet you can go and do the following. We had to have a system of prescriptions laws essentially that would say what would be appropriate, and they pertain to things such as take how many ducks or how many deer seasons of course, when you could do this, and there was always an objection about, you know, killing animals during the breeding season, or killing animals when they had young earlier, or nesting and so on and so forth. They were kind of common sense approaches, and there were also laws, of course that talked about how you could do this, even in the season in which you could do it, which was where many of the notions around fair chase and appropriate take were introduced. And it's important to realize that while many of these things were endemic in a sense to the United States and to Canada, because parallel things were going on in the country to the north, um that did not mean that there was not European influence on these things. And in fact, if perhaps the most classic example of that is fair chase. Fair chase is not an American creation. Fair chase is not a creation of the Boone and Crockett Club. Fair chase was introduced to America by primarily European writers and European sportsman's and quotation marks, including amongst the most famous a man by the name of Frank Forrester, which was his pen name who was a wealthy aristocrat from Europe who came here and talked and wrote a lot about hunting and the the aggressive life, the sportsman's life here and there. He and others were very influential in ideas such as you don't shoot a bird on the water, or you know, you would never shoot a bird on its nest, or you know you would never you know, run an animal into deep snow to kill it, or you know, just all those kinds of basic, reasonable, respectful codified things. So those kinds of things were in the law too. How much you could take, when you could take it, and how you could actually take it. These were all pretty early prescriptions, and if you think about it, they remain pretty much the kind of prescriptions that we still have a hundred and twenty later. It's it's it's pretty unbelievable when you think about, like, what are the kinds of things when you say allocation by law? What are the other things that they could be allocated by. We've kind of covered some of them, private land ownership, by markets, allocated by like how many how can it so? How much can we stand? Yeah, how much can we stand? You know? It's all these other ways that you might allocate wildlife. We've kind of covered, but now you now when you get into how do we you know, provide concretion to some of these ideas, and it's by putting them into law. Um, And it's I mean, it's interesting how how fair chase of those kind of like ethical principles rose out of the need to codify these and make them laws. Yes, that's pretty amazing. And also I think another uh, really significant issue is in today's world there are of course strong movements to try and give more and more autonomy and governance over wildlife used to communities in many parts of the world. This is a major thrust for the United Nations, for the world conservation unions, the World Wildlife Funds, you know, the big international NGOs, as well as world governments, the EU in particular. And I deal with this in a regular basis in my work with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. This is a very consistent, powerful narrative now in conservation and so what is interesting in this regard as we seek solutions and see great value in devolving wildlife management rights to communities in many many parts of the world. Interestingly, in the most capitalistic democratic of nations the United States and pretty close follower in Canada. We we create the most state driven, state operated, state directed conservation model, right. Uh. And so the laws of how it would be done and the laws of no one owns wildlife all protected or moved away from or did not involve the idea of giving over to counties or you know, towns or cities or whatever the right to sort of take over the wildlife in some the director, Yeah, we're saying that this is you're not you don't own this because your proximity doesn't dictate your ownership. But there's a major movement around the world. Indeed, it's viewed as one of the ways of saving wildlife in other parts. And we were just covering the hunting for the Markhors in Pakistan and they they have this this community based in services where these these local communities are fighting with each other to get the hunter to come in and give them the money. Um, which seems like a strange, but it's still it's still propelling them to maybe the right end. But again another it is but another but it is but it is uh, and not always perfect with that system either, of course. But I think What is really unique is that one of the most robust, longest standings certainly and most highly effective conservation mechanisms in the world in Canada and the United States is completely lies, completely outside of giving local communities you know, their own if you will. And I constantly bring this forward in the discussions that you know, when you talk about this as a this community based resource management approach as sort of the panacea. Please remember you have these two massive countries, uh, you know, in the you know, between the Pacific and the Atlantic that when it ran a very early experiment a hundred years ago, been working and it's been working pretty good with it. Yeah. Yeah, that's also interesting to point out. Yeah, and it it goes back to the democracy of wildlife and some of those ideas, um that we we really do have a democracy of wildlife and and and those more international community based things become aristocracies, um, whether it's by consequence or or how that because they become aristocrats because it's a small number of people funding you know, that are hunting these animals and funding it um in a way that just isn't acceptable here, wouldn't be acceptable here. But also they don't know that they're becoming aristocracies as such. But what is similar to our history is that they have a crisis of wildlife depiction and they have to search for a solution. And we can't transpose hours on them anymore than we can transpose as I tell them, there's on ours. I mean, if tomorrow I came back from you know, a major global conference and met with you know, lawmakers in in Ottawa and in Washington and said, you know, now, I think what we ought to do is you know, really bring community based wildlife management to the foreign count of the United States. I think you, you and your listeners can imagine what that would do. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a hunting, you know, versus values type of idea there. Hunting creates value in that in that international sense, now whereas here we don't we have the value of value. It's almost like the value created the privilege of hunting, Like the value is is kind of manifested some way in the hunting in this model in some way. So I think that's that's another great thing to understand. Um. I think like, as you break down this model, I think these first three you're kind of like, yeah, pretty much it I would have I always would have been like, we could stop here, simplifies it, but you guys kept going, and I think once you get to the end, you start to start to realize kind of why that's it. That is all thanks to Shane Mahoney for this conversation. Obviously, this is part one of a two part conversation that we've had, remember that, but this part one holds within a few jewels of the history of the North American model, And I think if I take away from this this part of the conversation the story of how it was conceived. So when we talk about CWD in the modern day, we talk about high fenced captive wildlife operations, and we can know that that some of those leanings were built into Dr Hilarious Geists thought process around this model when he first wrote it down. Uh, and that's huge. And then also we learned about how Shane helped to market and promote the ideas that he helped to codify with Dr Geist. So a huge piece of the history of the hunting world is covered here. In the next episode next Tuesday, we're going to cover the rest of the model, which includes a lot a lot of important topics. We're going to get into um challenges over time that this model has faced. We're gonna get into what the hunting world needs to understand about going forward with this model, some of the conflicts that will arise, and really Shane's core beliefs as to how the hunting community can carry forward in society and maintain its relevance, which is captivating p of conversational history of this podcast. I mean, I think it's probably the most interesting stuff that we've recorded in the many hours that we've recorded. So, as you can tell, I'm excited about it, and I wanted to cut it up into two pieces for that reason. I think it should be taken in parts and bits and pieces. So we will cut it up and give you the next piece this coming Tuesday. Hopefully come back for that. What else? What else? What else? What else? Man? You know, we got a lot going on. We're going to be coming. I'm going to be at the Portland's Live show. That Sucker is sold out, so um, if you didn't get your tickets, I'm sorry. But if you did get your tickets, I'll be there and hopefully that adds to your experience. Hopefully you can come hang out, come, shake hands, come see us and then have a good laugh with us while during the show. UM that I really enjoyed doing the Media LIVEE podcast and I'm probably that Mr Ronella has allowed me to join for so many I think that's it for now and and we will see you next week for the continued part two of this conversation with Shane Mahoney on the North American model here on the Hunting Collective. Thanks and bye bye